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I can't stand SAGA. I've run 2 campaigns with it, and it's just very wrong feel to me. Both SAGA games campaigns were rampant power gamers. That, and the eratta, and all the powers that should have been dark side points, etc etc...Never again.

The second RPG I ever bought (after Top Secret/SI) was the first edition of WEG's Star Wars RPG. We played a lot of that game way back when, and had some good times. I got involved with Cyberpunk eventually, and Star Wars became a go-to for occasional one-shots. I missed the second edition initially, and by the time I might have been interested in playing SW again, WEG had released dozens of books for the new version. There wasn't any way I could keep up, so I didn't try to.

That changed when I found that someone had sold their entire SWD6 collection to the local game store, and it ended up on their shelf of used games. I got pretty much everything (inluding all the Adventure Journals) for an average of $3-4 each. There are still some holes in my collection (the holy grail of which is Hideouts and Strongholds), but for the most part it's complete.

About the time I really started running SW again is when Wizards announced they'd be releasing a d20 version. Initially, I was very resistant to the notion of playing SW with d20. I was never a vocal poster in the SW gaming community, but I got the idea to take the d20 material that was released and convert it all to the D6 system as it was released. The result of all this labor was The Rebellion; it was also to symbolize my downfall.

As Nietzsche said, "... if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." The more I began to read the d20 rules, the more attractive they started to become. When the Revised Core Rules were released for SWd20, I decided to give the game a try in practice (the game I ran eventually inspired the article on Ord Vaxal which appeared in Dungeon Magazine #106/Polyhedron #165). Die-hard D6 fans will say that this is when I fell to the Dark Side.

After that, my interest in D6 remained, but only insofar as my nostalgia was concerned. I still liked D6, and I still valued the extensive amount of content that WEG had published in the time they had the SW license. It was also around this time that writing really took off for me, which didn't leave me much (any!) time to continue updating The Rebellion (and, sadly, it hasn't been updated since).

I occasionally consider dusting off my D6 books and seeing how the old edition plays now, given the new experiences I've had since. I don't know when (or if) this will happen. My job, my children, and other responsibilities that didn't exist for me six years ago often cloud my schedule (as I'm sure most folks will understand).

How interesting... Barrier Peaks, you're the guy who had "The Rebellion" website!?! Nice! I remember going to your site several times and looking up items for reference, and saving it to my favorites several times. It was a good site.

Alkai, as far as your rogue monster player... that story is both amazing and ridiculous. Its hard to believe a player could be so r-tarded, but also hard to believe he could get away with it for so long too. You did have sort of a unique situation though.

I guess things like that make me glad I never really played with strangers. I only game with my closer friends. But, some things to think about in general:
- GM really needs to give approval before a player makes characters with unusual abilities or origins.
- As a group, players and GM should enforce the GM's approval / disapproval authority and back him up in cases where the GM has to make a ruling that isn't covered by the rules
- Players should back up the GM's storytelling authority, but also call him out when he/she is being unfair
- The emphasis should be on having fun, and creating a good story

So, in the case where your rogue player was taking over the campaign, if I was the GM I would have first not allowed any special abilities that I thought were over powered. In your case, the player had an unusual ability and background he wanted to try, but it sounds like the ability made him overwhelmingly powerful from the beginning. I would probably agree with the general idea, but assume the worst, the artifact mission will never get done, OR I would personally throw in complications to make it hard or impossible to accomplish. Next I would allow the player to have a version of the abilities he wanted, but I'd force him to accept a compromise, so that the ability conformed to the game mechanics I approved of. This would prevent him from becoming so powerful that nobody could stop him.

When the rogue player's actions started getting annoying, I'd put him in game into a situation that continuing the bad behaviour would be bad for him. Like if he's sucking down everyone's force abilities or something, maybe he drains someone important to the other players, or popular in the game world, so that he develops a lot of enemies. If his character started getting too strong to beat, even while conforming to the rules I approved, then maybe a secondary consequence of his actions is that he built a negative reputation for his entire race, and now they're all being hunted, or his homeworld was found out, and the place is being bombed from orbit by the Imperial fleet. Wouldn't it be ironic if it was the evil empire that had come to the rescue and destroyed the evil race? Then the player would realize that it was his fault that the rest of his race was exterminated. Or maybe they were ALMOST all exterminated, except for maybe two or three, and they figured out what went wrong and traced the bad blood back the player, and now the player is being hunted by his own people!

So, things like that. I'd use good story telling to get the player back in line. If he started pulling out threats like the not giving a ride back, I'd immediately make sure I had arrangements so he could never use a threat like that ever again. Either I'd secure some other transportation, or refuse to GM if nobody else could provide a ride or we couldn't move the game location to somewhere else we could all get to. Using real life threats to get your way in game is BS. The neither the GM or other players should tolerate that for even a second. If the guy is sort of a friend and you don't want to just throw him out of the game, yeah, you gotta put him on notice and let him know the behavior isn't gonna be tolerated. If nobody even likes the guy, throw him out. He's just gone.

I had one example sort of like that when I was like 14 or 15... I was just getting started GMing, and we were playing star wars D6. One guy made an ISB agent, and well, he played him as a typical ISB agent, arrogant and cocky and a bully. I was ok with that, but it was starting to draw attention away from the main story. Plot progress came to a screeching halt because he was too busy bullying every NPC he came across. But, unfortunately for him, he was on the Arch-villain's Star Destroyer. If he had behaved himself, he could've been in a position of power, but he was POing all the NPC crew, and word eventually got back to the arch-villain, who was a dark jedi knight, and the ISB agent player still didn't back down! So what happened next? Exactly what any arch-villain dark jedi would do, he said "I hate ISB..." and force choked the SOB.

Wow, that was a long discussion... So hopefully Alkai, you've been able to remove the offensive player and the game is back to fun. Let me know if you have any other issues you want to talk about.

I can't stand SAGA. I've run 2 campaigns with it, and it's just very wrong feel to me. Both SAGA games campaigns were rampant power gamers. That, and the eratta, and all the powers that should have been dark side points, etc etc...Never again.

all the errata? Do you not remember all the errata for the RCR? Holy cow! Go back and look at the RCR errata vs ALL the errata for ALL Saga books.

In regards to the powers that should have been dark side, those were changed due to new scenes from the movies and cartoon, like Mace Windu using Force Grip on Grevious in the original Clone Wars cartoon. How could a Jedi Master use Force Grip and get a DSP? Or Yoda using Force Slam on the senatorial guards in Palpatines office in EP III.

I would say that SW d6 and Saga edition both do an excellent job at emulating the movies and what we have seen and read in the Star Wars universe as well as keeping the action fast paced. The RCR was way too unnecessarily rules heavy for its own good, and it had to be revised every time a new movie or something came out. The Revenge of the Sith collection for the RCR and 2 game session long space combats come to mind when I think of the RCR.

"I'm afraid it is you who are mistaken. About a great, many things."

"It is not the rules that make or break a game, it's the GM and the players."

My spin is, if they had years to develop SAGA, why didn't they get it right, first time, right out of the gate?

It's not like WOTC didn't have Two Editions already, prior to that.

One could say the same thing about Dungeons and Dragons, or D6 Star Wars (which had three editions prior to being acquired by WotC), or any other RPG with more than one edition. Every game has errata; it's an unfortunate fact of life. Not every company provides corrections to their products, which is something that Wizards always seems to do.

It's easy for anyone who isn't directly involved in game design and development to sit back comfortably and say, "Why isn't this perfect?" There are countless variables involved that aren't always obvious, not even to the playtesters. Situations will ultimately arise in practice that weren't considered.

As to changing the rules every time a new movie comes out, that's an unfortunate side effect of working on a licensed property. The original (D6) edition of the game made certain assumptions about morality and using the Force that, at the time, weren't contradicted by the canon. Unfortunately, when working with Lucas, the films trump any non-canon source. Everything that is printed must be approved by Lucasfilm.

When you get right down to it, it's your game. Do what you like with it. Don't like Saga? Play RCR or D6. Don't like either of those? Convert it to GURPS, Hero, Storyteller, or whatever else floats your boat. Do a little game design of your own.

...Don't like Saga? Play RCR or D6. Don't like either of those? Convert it to GURPS, Hero, Storyteller, or whatever else floats your boat. Do a little game design of your own.

Exactly and that's why so many editions/conversions of Star Wars exist. Not everyone can agree on how they want their Star Wars games to be played. For me, D6 was and still is as close to the action/adventure of the Star Wars movies as I can get but it doesn't stop my curiousity from probing other avenues. I have (and enjoy on some level) Saga Edition. I've adopted and developed some Star Wars conversions for Wushu and am considering doing a conversion for Savage Worlds. Still, I look forward to the day that I can once again crack open my WEG edition and run a classic D6 campaign again. All RPGs have their merits but on the whole, Star Wars D6 has been the quickest, easiest, yet most-satisfying RPG system I have ever played. I could accurately (and fairly) run the game from memory at this point.

YMMV but I encourage those with any interest in Star Wars to give it a shot if the opportunity presents itself.

Yes I remember those good times play out on the balcony at my GM’s house. WEG SW is what sealed the deal for me as for RPG’s. Currently I still have most of the books and there still in great condition to boot. I did have trouble with a couple of them they just never stayed all together the binding kept coming apart. I found the system very flexible and you could incorporate multiple genres’ just using the D6 system. I think Saga is great for a D20 system, and I find it is flexible. I’ve just never been able to find someone willing to give it a try. D & D seems to be the main staple of everyone diet now a day’s which I have yet to wrap my head around. I’m not much a fantasy player, but I’ll stick with WOW in the mean time.

The best way to deal with an annoying player, like the one in question. As a friend tell him that his actions are not keeping with his original promise. Have the other players back you up. This way he knows that no one is enjoying the game but him. If it doesn't help then find another ride and let him know your decision to exclude his character from the game. If he tries to strand the party at a location, leave him behind.

I actually prefer the Star Wars version of Gurps over D6 or D20. Gives the gm and the players so much more options.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
- Charles Babbage (1791 - 1871)